Re: Janus A/Eames - log
The dream did not hold the expectation of nightmare.
Nightmares, Eames found, felt different. There was a stretched feeling, as if too much had been crammed under surface tension that was at every moment under threat of breaking and allowing you to bob upward to gasp for air - or a remittence of hope after ghastly twists and turns of your own imagination, darling. Eames didn't nightmare. He dreamed in straight lines when he dreamed anything that resembled a nightmare, and he disliked invading them intensely. It was a little like seasickness, to be thrown in to the choppiness of someone else's psyche, or like going down too quickly and getting the bends.
This was not a nightmare. Eames wasn't a details man. Not when it came to places. He observed every scrap of detail there was, soaked it up like a sponge so far as it gave an indication of trouble to come churning down the pipeline towards him, but the lack of detail was something a crew would admonish him for. Not a crew, one or two in particular. But Eames wasn't an architect and it wasn't a puzzle. He didn't put out boxes and locked cupboards, half-cocked doors, his secrets weren't splayed out and he hadn't put them at the back end of a maze.
He'd promised a show and there was one. The dream began in the middle of it. It was a thickly carpeted box, the suggestion of a gilt rail at the very edge and deep, comfortable velvet seating that was a shade of dull cherry that belonged in memory but was a shade too other for reality. The box leaned over an empty theater, the seats bristling like teeth, and onto a stage where there was a very bawdy burlesque show in full tilt.
When Janus emerged into it, Eames was leaning against the rail with one slim hand balanced there, and a trail of fabric filmy and scattered with sparkles sweeping somewhere at his feet. The blonde's hair was piled thickly at the nape of his neck, and she smiled directly into the face of the demon with eyes still too sharp to belong on a woman whose chin and nose were soft enough for willing, biddable femininity.
The burlesque dancer on stage, on the other hand, had feather fans. Eames' attention didn't appear to be on the stage, but it had to be, you see. There was a recess at the back of the box where a curtain had been drawn across the exit, and Eames paid particular attention to the incoming dreamer with fascination for whether a little prompt might go a long way. The eyes, you see.